Move-In Day!

Hellooooo Palo Alto! :)

It's my first day in my new place at Stanford and I am loving the place already :) We (my parents, Jenai, and I) arrived in Palo Alto last night...it was a little sad to end the road trip, we had such random fun in all the places we stopped across the country (my favorite stop being Vegas!) We moved all the boxes in today and as soon as I started to get everything organized, I had to head off to orientation for the SWEAT trip I'm taking with all of the MD, MD/PhD, and MoM students. (MoM=Master of Science in Medicine for those less familiar with Stanford acronyms). I'm so excited that I don't have to poop in holes! We got an email yesterday about how to exactly poop in the woods...here's a little snippet from the email:

Troweling/ Diggin it/ riding the poop train
· Leave No Trace
· Cat-hole 6-8in deep, what do you use? (trowel)
· Don’t ever touch anything but dirt with the trowel
· Positions to squat
· whatever is most relaxing to you
· figure it out before you start your engines

THIS IS A REAL EMAIL PEOPLE!! I knew Stanford was some sort of mecca for outdoorsy people but I was absolutely not prepared for this introduction to nature so quickly. Luckily, I chose the car camping option when I signed up back in June (which I totally forgot about) so I will be hanging out eating veggie chili with my fellow MD compadres around a campfire rather than hauling pinto beans up the mountain in a backpack. Yessss!!!

As far as the people go at Stanford, I definitely felt the non-Ivy inferiority pangs for a bit when we had to go around and introduce ourselves. Everyone was from MIT, Harvard, Yale, etc etc so I felt a little nervous about "just" graduating from the University of Georgia. After talking to a certain special friend tonight on the phone, I realized that I do have a little bit of coolness to offer the group regardless of my state school status so I'm excited to see who I'll get closer to during the year. I was feeling some good vibes from the people in my small group for camping and I'm sure spending four days alone up at Lake Alpine will only fortify our budding friendships :) I'm really excited for the Grad/Law/Business/Everyone else students to get here too...there's been little people running around campus for some summer camp madness. Makes me nervous.

Anywho, I have to get up at 6 to head out on my rendezvous with Mother Nature so I should be wrapping this up soon. Here's to not being eaten by bears for the next four days!

Peace & love,
Jazz